The Link Advocates, Governments, Families, and Parks initiative (Link) is working in six disadvantaged communities in Los Angeles County to establish a new model for successful collaborations between under- resourced municipal agencies, community-based organizations, and technical assistance providers to build and renovate multibenefit parks.

The UCLA Luskin for Innovation evaluated this promising initiative in the following report and found that it demonstrates the value and success of a collaborative, community- driven parks building model. The accompanying roadmap contains lessons learned, metrics for success, and eight policy recommendations to better support the model.

Over the past 25 years, the creation of 150,000 new common interest communities has made 30,000,000 Americans members of "private governments." The spread of these common interest developments has created a quiet revolution in the structure of neighbor relations, local government, and land-use control. Stephen E. Barton's and Carol Silverman's, Common interest communities: Private governments and the public interest, offers us one of the first books addressing the complex nature of these increasingly widely-used i nstitutions.